The present invention is directed to a method and die for forming a tubular blank into a structural component.
It is known to take tubular structures and mold them into structural components having different diameters and shapes. It has been proposed to accomplish such forming via induction heating of the tubular form and inflating the form with a gas to form the structural component. The induction heating process generates heat within a material by inducing a current in the material, whereby the material's resistance to the electrical current generates heat as the current is passed therethrough. Examples of such induction heating processes are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,269,986; 7,024,897; 7,003,996; 6,613,164; and 6,322,645, which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entireties. Other methods or systems for super plastic forming of a metal plate via induction heating coils are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,410,132; 5,530,227; 5,645,744; and 5,683,608, which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entireties. Although the induction heating and gas forming processes and systems described in these patents and otherwise known in the art may function for their intended purposes, such systems are not suitable to be made from a metallic structure.